


Homeward (Silk) Bound

by c0cunt



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Hitchhiking, M/M, Reincarnation, Renaissance Faires, aerial silk artistry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 15:46:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6121453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/c0cunt/pseuds/c0cunt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fernweh (n. a crave for travel; being homesick for a place you've never been)<br/>Connie is just trying to find his way home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homeward (Silk) Bound

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> I really don't know what I'm doing with my titles any longer. BUT!!! Here we are.

  Connie never liked to stay in one place for too long.  It made him feel cramped, uncomfortable, like he was going to crawl out of his skin if he didn’t leave _right_ now.  It at least made being bounced from foster home to foster home once every few months a bit more bearable; it still sucked of course, but it at least helped a tiny bit, before he’d get the itch to leave again, and have to be brought home by police after he tried to run.  He couldn’t help it though; all the psychologists his foster families sent him to said it had to do with a sense of shame and fear he held, but it wasn’t that.  No, he was just trying to find his way home.

  Home was a strange idea for Connie to think about, honestly.  When a friend in middle school had asked him to picture what his favorite place in the world would be, all Connie could conjure up was a feeling of weightlessness with the whirring of cables, leather flush against his skin, a flash of silver, and a rough, calloused hand gripping his own.  It felt too private to say out loud, so he had just dumbly said that he lives on 9th street, and a month after that he was on the other side of the state, with a different foster family.  His running away became more frequent, and his last foster family was glad to be rid of him by the time he turned 18.  The system wiped their hands of Connie Springer, and he did what came naturally to him at this point:  He ran.

  Did he have any idea where to go?  Nope.  But it was much easier for him to keep running, without needing to go to school, or go back to where he was living at some point.  Getting odd jobs, usually off the books, to pay for his surviving and travelling, was surprisingly easy.  Given, he was surviving and travelling by the skin of his teeth, and it wasn’t particularly fun surviving by the skin of his teeth...It was by chance that he ended up travelling with a bubbly brunette who called themselves Sasha, who avoided sleeping as much as humanly possible, and who squirreled away at least three kinds of snacks in their overstuffed backpack (just as he remembered them to be).  The duo fell into each other easily, just like old times, cackling and causing mayhem everywhere they were employed together.  It felt a little bit more like home, for Connie, even if it wasn’t exactly home.

  It was Sasha’s suggestion to go south in the winter, like a bird or something.  They had been hitchhiking somewhere in North Carolina (Connie couldn’t give two shits where they were, it still wasn’t _home_ ), for however long, and Sasha had mentioned wanting to see if they could go to a faire they had gone to when they were younger.  Connie agreed to it, especially when Sasha said they had a friend they could hit up for a place to stay as well as jobs, and soon the pair were smushed in the backseat of a stranger’s car for as far as Savannah, Georgia.  Sasha was able to get ahold of their friend (who groaned about them being terrible for never having a phone to contact them with), and their uneventful Greyhound bus to Tampa consisted of naps and snacks.

  They were met at their stop by a tiny blonde woman, and her grouchy freckled girlfriend.  Connie recognized them instantly, their names (Krista or Historia, whichever she was using, and Ymir) tumbling out of his mouth before he could stop himself.  Ymir eyed him suspiciously, but Historia’s eyes glittered with warmth as she corrected him, before shoving all three of them into her tiny matchbox car, blathering on about getting the pair of them cleaned up so that their boss would feel more inclined to interview and hire them.  Ymir snidely muttering about how Sasha and he both needed to reacquaint themselves with hair care products and a razor, which neither of them could really deny.  There’s only so much a dollar store bar of soap and a coin operated shower could do, and neither of them had really cared to waste their preciously small amount of money on disposable razors.

  (Home, home couldn’t be far from here, Connie thought hopefully as he shaved his scraggly beard and hair off a few hours later, in Historia’s apartment.  Ymir nodded in approval when he left the bathroom, giving him a quick noogie and wistfully saying how she had missed her little monkey friend.)

 

* * *

 

  Three days later, Connie was having trouble remembering to stop calling their boss Captain, and basking in his praise as he cleaned as efficiently as possible.  Sasha had ended up joining Hanji in their booth, madly sciencing away together for several hours.  Reiner, Annie, and Bertholdt took them both aside and asked for their forgiveness about the past.  Nothing could change what had happened, and they were so far removed from that past, that Connie couldn’t help but laugh a little bit, and didn’t even feel bad about sporting a new bruise in the shape of Annie’s fist on his jaw.  Eren and Armin cared for the horses that the jousters used, always cheering Mikasa on when it was her turn to joust.  Sasha had frozen when they had spotted her, and Connie could tell that they had found their home again.  He had sighed along with the crowd happily when Mikasa had jumped off her horse in the middle of the joust when she had spotted Sasha, and nearly tripped over herself to share a quick kiss “for good luck”.  Mikasa easily won, and she claimed it was all thanks to Sasha’s lucky kiss.

  Connie’s break was an hour long, and he wandered around the faire by himself, stopping only a few times to look at what his friends were doing.  Reiner was jovially laughing as Annie shouted for little kids to come take on “the strongest man on earth”, beating him up with plastic and foam swords.  Historia and Bertholdt were carefully braiding hair with ribbons and flowers, happily chattering away together (Bertholdt occasionally stepping away to wipe his hands and brow on a little hand towel).  He paused outside of the tent that Ymir was working, carefully showing off the delicate jewelry she had spent months creating.  ( _Home, home, this is almost home, but there still was someone missing_.)  Smoke from food vendors filled the air deliciously, and the sounds of people chattering nearly drowned out the peaceful music that was suddenly floating dreamily on the air.  Connie turned to find the source of the music, freezing when he saw the metal ring that was hanging off of one of the tallest trees now covered in a giant silk sheet that fluttered in the slight breeze.

  The silk didn’t surprise him, he had been expecting something to go on the metal ring, even though no one told him what would be going up there.  What did surprise Connie was that there were people gathering around a small boombox at the bottom of the silk, and a figure was slowly pulling its way up the silk easily, as if it they were using a ladder or something.  Connie slowly shuffled his way through the crowd to get a closer look, squinting up at the person in the air.  Someone cleared their throat nearby, catching Connie’s attention, just as the music flowed from the slow, fanciful music into something more alluring.  Freckles and tanned skin, but it wasn’t Ymir; no, it had to be Marco, Connie realized with a grin as he moved closer, but he was gesturing up at the person in the air.  The lack of a safety net made Connie anxious, especially as the person in the air tumbled down the silk, stopping effortlessly halfway down.  It was only then that Connie could get a look at them, losing his breath as suddenly as a punch to the gut.

  Lean, muscular arms and legs moved enchantingly, effortlessly, with the silk, a majority of the person’s body covered by fabric that was several shades too dark to match their skin tone.  Their hair was too short to tie up, dishwater blonde with a dark undertone, and they seemed to move extra slow to keep their hair sort of out of their face.  A face that Connie knew everything about, even if he couldn’t see every detail from where he was standing.  He knew the honey gold eyes, the thin eyebrows and sharp smirk, the nose that always twitched when he smelled wood smoke.  Connie knew every callous and crack in his strong hands that easily twisted up the silk in practiced motions, had felt them millions of times on his own body (on his chest, delicately holding his hands, gripping his thighs securely, reverently stroking him, inside him, on him, everywhere, touch that he so desperately craved now that he was so close once again).  

  “Jean,” Connie breathed, dizzy with relief as he watched the hypnotizing routine.  ( _Home, home, he’s home, finally_.)  Marco hummed as he nodded slightly, and as if he could’ve heard Connie say his name, Jean looked down at them, a cross between slight concentration and relaxation softening  his sharp face.  Connie couldn’t help waving up at him slightly, and Jean’s mouth fell open in surprise.  Then he was tumbling, and judging by the hissing noise Marco let out and how he darted forward, it wasn’t a part of Jean’s routine, and Connie’s heart dropped as he moved forward as well.  But Jean obviously was in control, stopping his tumbling just short of Marco’s waiting arms, untangling from the silk with ease.  

  Connie had barely any time to react before Jean was suddenly _there_ in front of him, eyes shining brightly.  A tentative brush of hands, Jean’s much softer than Connie remembered, and then Jean was surrounding him in a crushing hug.  He let out a sigh, sinking into Jean’s arms; they were absolutely perfect, just as he remembered, everything felt right.  “I missed you, Connie,” Jean rumbled into his ear, curling down to tuck his face into Connie’s neck.  He couldn’t help but grin, even as he felt a wetness against his neck.  He was home, and there was no need for him to run anymore.


End file.
